Okay, so I haven't actually been
able to find much information about this, but according to what I've
pieced together from the internet and my dad's memory, it was an
American promoter who first came up with the idea of donkey baseball. He
figured people would be willing to pay to see baseball played on
donkeyback—which of course they were. The regular old
non-donkey-riding pitcher would throw to the batter, who, once he'd
gotten a hit, would clamber up onto his steed and do his best to coax it
around the bases. Meanwhile, fielders would try to goad their own
donkeys into going after the ball.

The promoter and his
team toured around North America challenging local baseball squads to
mount up. It became quite the fad; people started organizing their own
games, there was even a movie made about it. And when they came through
T.O., they'd head down to a diamond in New Toronto—by the lakeshore in
Etobicoke—right across from the Goodyear plant where my grandfather
worked. He and the rest of the company's softball team would cross the
street, pair up with a donkey and play a few frustrating innings.

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You can read more about one old game of donkey baseball in this Sports Illustrated article. And apparently people still play the game from time to today. There's YouTube video of it here and here,
which really seems a lot less fun when you think of it from the
donkey's perspective. There are also those who also play donkey
basketball. It has its own Wikipedia page and denunciations from PETA and everything.

This post originally appeared on the Toronto Dreams Project Historical Ephemera Blog,which tells stories about the history of Toronto. You can read more highlights from it here, or visit it yourself here.